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Fear and Resilience in Brainwave’s “Capturing Conflict”http://danablog.org/2015/03/03/fear-and-resilience-in-brainwaves-capturing-conflict/
http://danablog.org/2015/03/03/fear-and-resilience-in-brainwaves-capturing-conflict/#commentsTue, 03 Mar 2015 19:20:12 +0000http://danablog.org/?p=2673Continue reading →]]>In 2011, photojournalist Lynsey Addario was covering the civil war in Libya when her team was “ripped out” of their jeep by Moammar Gadhafi’s troops. After enduring one week of being bound up, tortured, and continually threatened with execution, Addario and her teammates were released. Despite being kidnapped twice (once in Libya, once in Iraq), caught in an ambush in Afghanistan, and witnessing the destitution of famine and war, Addario exhibits not a single trace of trauma. What is it that makes some of us more resilient than others in times of extreme panic or fear?

The event “Capturing Conflict”— part of the Rubin Museum’s Brainwave series—paired Addario with neuroscientist Glenn Schafe to discuss what happens when our bodies undergo life-threatening anxiety. A psychology professor at Hunter College who specializes in fear, Schafe provided scientific insight on why some people respond to stressful situations with resilience while others exhibit symptoms of trauma.

For “a variety of different species,” it is not uncommon to instinctively stop moving when faced with a dangerous situation, he said. Freezing gives the brain a moment to evaluate the situation and determine how to cope and, ultimately, survive. This physiological reaction, first described by physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon, is commonly referred to as the human “fight-or-flight” response. After Addario took the audience through her recollection of the kidnapping in Libya, we could see how her body’s reaction was purely instinctive:

[I]mmediately we were caught in crossfire, and it was very intense crossfire—there were bullets everywhere…I was terrified, and often in those moments I can’t move my legs…I was immediately taken by one of Gadhafi’s troops, and he was fighting with me to take my bags and my camera, and, irrationally, I was fighting back.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is not all that common for people who experience shock or trauma, said Schafe. He explained that “[t]here are telltale signs in the brain…that correlate to pathology, such as a smaller hippocampus or a smaller prefrontal cortex; and that goes hand in hand with the inability to regulate emotions.” Schafe noted that the amygdala, a region of the brain that plays a prominent role in expressing fear, is hyper-responsive in people who have PTSD. However, for the most part, resilience is the norm.

Clinical psychologists have identified three trajectories that one might follow after a traumatic experience:

Development of post-traumatic stress that becomes chronic and unremitting

Brief period of post-traumatic stress that lasts a week to a month, followed by recovery

No symptoms of post-traumatic stress (majority of people fall into this category)

For someone who has experienced more distress than most of us will witness in a lifetime, Lynsey’s resilience is evidence of her brain’s ability to persevere. Most of her colleagues who cover war continue to do to so, despite the consistent risks that they take for the job. Even though Addario acknowledged that she feels “sort of tortured” when she works, being able to witness history is thrilling.

I don’t know why I go back…I think the work is really important, and I know how to cover war. I’ve been doing it for fifteen years….If I’m not doing it, I feel like I’m not being true to myself…I also think that I have the rare and unique ability to affect policy with very strong images that appear wherever they do; so I think that I have a responsibility to keep going back, and so I do.

This year marks the Rubin Museum’s eighth annual Brainwave series of conversations, films, and experiences revolving around neuroscience. Events continue until April 29; tickets can be purchased at the door or online.

Judging by the Saturday morning calm on Columbia University’s Morningside campus, you might think January 31 was a typical lazy weekend. But just inside the doors of Lerner auditorium, the tension was palpable: the Brain Bee competition was only hours away, and the contestants were poring over their notes, taking advantage of every last moment before taking the stage. This was the day they had been preparing for since December—they had arrived at the 2015 NYC Regional Brain Bee.

Seniors from Queens’ John Bowne High School posing at the Brain Bee. Photo Credit: johnbowne.org

Every winter, talented high school students across the country are selected to represent their schools in a regional Brain Bee, a spelling-bee-like competition that tests their knowledge of neuroscience. For the past four years, Columbia University Neuroscience Outreach (CUNO) has partnered with the Dana Alliance to prepare the students for the contest and to host it on the Columbia campus in Morningside Heights. As the leaders of CUNO’s Brain Bee activities, we recruited volunteers from the Columbia community to help teach the material to the high school competitors, to proctor the competition itself, and to wrap up the festivities with a Family Brain Fair.

Brain Bee prep included two optional Saturdays of instruction and review at Columbia’s Medical Center in Washington Heights. At the first session, volunteers taught lessons ranging from brain basics and neurodevelopment to sensation and perception. Two weeks later, the contestants returned to learn about topics like human brain imaging, the neuroscience of sleep, and various neurological disorders and how to diagnose them. After the lessons, we gave them a chance to show off what they’d learned in a game of “Brain Jeopardy,” led by Columbia undergraduates (who couldn’t pass up the opportunity to volunteer, despite being on their winter break!).

We topped off the day by taking the high schoolers on two lab tours. At one demonstration, they saw olfactory neurons in the fruit fly brain that had been manipulated to glow green when the neurons were activated. They watched as pulses of scented air were blown at the fly, and groups of neurons lit up in response to the plumes of odor. In another demonstration, they saw two species of fish that use electrical pulses to locate prey and other fish. Demonstrations like these are “more stimulating than learning things in the abstract” explained volunteer Dan Kato. Dan placed recording electrodes into the water and attached them to an acoustic amplifier that converts electrical pulses into sounds, so that the students heard loud clicks every time the fish discharged their electric organs. He even added a few worms to the tank to show the students how the fish change the frequency of pulses they emit when they are locating food. “I was impressed with their level of knowledge of action potential physiology,” Dan told us, referring to the mechanisms by which neurons fire. Clearly, these competitors had been studying!

One week later, soon after a blizzard shut down the city’s subway system, we were relieved to wake up to a crisp January day—bitterly cold, but thankfully dry and calm. To commence the day’s event, Dr. Frances Champagne, Professor of Psychology at Columbia University, shared her research on how environmental and genetic factors affect maternal behavior, and how this in turn affects the development of offspring. Dr. Champagne highlighted exciting findings investigating the mechanism through which life experience can affect gene expression and behavior, and why these mechanisms are so important for our healthcare systems to take into consideration. The audience was captivated by the talk, and, at the end, a dozen hands were raised by students and parents alike, interested in learning more.

Now it was time for the big event! Professor Mike Shadlen, two-year veteran emcee of the event, took the podium and instructed Brain Bee competitors to take their seats in front of the judges.

The top three competitors from the 2015 NYC Brain Bee pose with the judges and the MC. From left: Judge Kelly C. Rilett, Ph.D.; Melissa Cao, second place winner; Master of Ceremonies Michael Shadlen, M.D., Ph.D.; Akash Pillai, third place winner; Judge Haung (Ho) Yu, Ph.D.; Mary Zhuo Ke, first place winner; Judge Sebastien Thuault, Ph.D.

After many rounds of questions and deliberations, four competitors remained. It took a dozen questions to stump these neuroscience-whiz competitors, but finally the first-, second-, and third-place winners were announced! In third place was 17-year-old Akash Pillai from Townsend Harris High School in Queens, in second place was 16-year-old Melissa Cao from Bethpage High School in Long Island, and taking first place was 17-year-old Mary Zhuo Ke from Cathedral High in Manhattan. We congratulated Mary and introduced ourselves, explaining that we would help her to prepare for the next phase—the national competition.

CUNO volunteers teaching visitors about the adaptability of their brains with a bean-bag tossing game during the Family Brain Fair. Photo credit: Kelley Remole (2015).

One of the favorite events, especially among volunteers, is the Family Brain Fair. The fair comes immediately after the competition, giving all contestants and their families a chance to celebrate with educational activities. Activities included a station with Muscle Spiker Boxes, where visitors measured electrical activity in their own muscles by applying electrodes to their skin; a Stroop Test Challenge, where visitors participated in a perceptual interference game; and of course the ever-popular Brain Bank booth.

The brain bank was a hit with all ages at the Family Brain Fair. Photo credit: Kelley Remole (2015).

As always, the human brains drew some of the biggest crowds, and generated astonished sounds from the visitors. One little boy was so excited that he tried to bring a brain over to his baby brother’s stroller to explain to him what he had just learned.

Now that the regional competition is over, our champion, Mary Zhuo Ke, is busy preparing to compete in the National Brain Bee, which will take place March 20-22 in Baltimore, Maryland. We are beyond delighted with every student who took the initiative to learn about the brain and pursue science with a passion. As Mike Shadlen said at the beginning of the competition, “Every competitor has already succeeded by making it here today, having increased their knowledge about neuroscience and the brain.”

About the authors:

Jess is an M.D./Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Columbia University, where she studies hippocampal modulation of mood in mice.

Katie is a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Columbia University, where she studies the brains of fruit flies to learn about associative memory.

Want to learn more about the brain and find activities in the New York City area?

]]>http://danablog.org/2015/03/02/meeting-tomorrows-neuroscientists-behind-the-scenes-at-the-nyc-brain-bee/feed/0danablog505brainbee guest postThe top three competitors from the 2015 NYC Brain Bee pose with the judges and the MC. From left: Judge Kelly C. Rilett, Ph.D.; Melissa Cao, second place winner; Master of Ceremonies Michael Shadlen, M.D., Ph.D.; Akash Pillai, third place winner; Judge Haung (Ho) Yu, Ph.D.; Mary Zhuo Ke, first place winner; Judge Sebastien Thuault, Ph.D. CUNO volunteers teaching visitors about the adaptability of their brains with a bean-bag tossing game during the Family Brain Fair. Photo credit: Kelley Remole (2015). The brain bank was a hit with all ages at the Family Brain Fair. Photo credit: Kelley Remole (2015). From the Archives: How Neuroscience Captured the 21st Centuryhttp://danablog.org/2015/02/26/from-the-archives-how-neuroscience-captured-the-21st-century/
http://danablog.org/2015/02/26/from-the-archives-how-neuroscience-captured-the-21st-century/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 15:04:39 +0000http://danablog.org/?p=2661Continue reading →]]>When researchers Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, and Eric Kandel shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000, we commissioned memory researcher John H. Byrne to write an essay on what their achievements meant to the field. In his 2001 essay, “How Neuroscience Captured the Twenty-First Century’s First Nobel Prize,” Byrne starts with a good chunk of Kandel’s acceptance speech; gives a cogent review of each scientist’s separate path and how their discoveries eventually entwined; describes how this changed the field; and considers what it might mean for the future. As you might suspect, it’s a long essay, but full of gems.

Whether overdue or just in the nick of time (as the Decade of the Brain closes), this Nobel Prize celebrates an achievement different in kind from previous observation, speculation, and investigation of the brain. For the ﬁrst time, an unambiguously mental phenomenon—memory—has been explained in wholly material, mechanical terms. The hypothesis of a separate, nonmaterial, otherworldly realm has become superﬂuous. A banquet is not the place to spin out these disturbing implications, but Kandel does acknowledge them, for those who will hear, by returning to where his story began—“Know thyself.”

From Kandel, who spoke for all three that night:

“The three of us whom you honor here tonight, and our generation of scientists, have attempted to translate abstract philosophical questions about the mind into the empirical language of biology… We three have taken the first steps in linking mind to molecules by determining how the biochemistry of signaling within and between nerve cells is related to mental processes and mental disorders. We have found that the neural networks of the brain are not fixed, but that communication between nerve cells can be regulated by neurotransmitter molecules.”

In reviewing the history of neuroscience and research, Byrne describes “gaps in the foundation” in understanding how the brain works at mid-century:

Although the task was daunting, the next step in understanding the hardware of the brain was to explore its wiring to see how billions of similar neurons might be connected to process information. Some nagging questions, and the implications of certain new discoveries, however, also began to suggest gaps in our knowledge. The computer analogy was already looking inadequate. First, two neurotransmitters seemed sufﬁcient (one to excite and another to inhibit); but more were known to exist, and perhaps there were still more to be discovered. Was more than simple excitation and inhibition going on? Or did some circuits in the brain have speciﬁc neurotransmitters dedicated to their exclusive use?

Nor did this brain model, as it stood, go very far to solve the mystery of learning and memory. How could richly interconnected but stable neurons store a memory? Perhaps memories were stored in reverberating loops of electrical activity in interconnected neural networks. Or perhaps synapses might themselves be plastic and growing. If so, exactly how did they change? Finally, and, perhaps most important, what were the underlying mechanisms of various brain diseases? Despite progress at the level of basic understanding, by the 1950s not a single neurological or psychiatric disorder was understood at a mechanistic level. There were precious few treatments, few drugs available, and no understanding of why the drugs worked.

While the history section is clearly written and fascinating, the most telling part for me was toward the end. In the past decades, have we moved any farther along this path?

Carlsson’s work led directly to a rational treatment for Parkinson’s disease; it seems likely that the discoveries of Kandel and Greengard will benefit the treatment of other diseases such as age-related memory loss, mental retardation, and Alzheimer’s disease. But much remains to be done. There is a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, but not a cure. What are the mechanisms that lead to the degeneration of the dopamine neurons, and how can we prevent this process? Similarly, there are treatments for schizophrenia and depression, but the underlying mechanisms are unknown.

Hungry for more history? The Society for Neuroscience has a series of more than two dozen hour-long videos in its History of Neuroscience series, including chats with Carlsson, Greengard, and Kandel.

—Nicky Penttila

]]>http://danablog.org/2015/02/26/from-the-archives-how-neuroscience-captured-the-21st-century/feed/0danablog505National Geographic Features Split-Brain Pioneerhttp://danablog.org/2015/02/18/national-geographic-features-split-brain-pioneer/
http://danablog.org/2015/02/18/national-geographic-features-split-brain-pioneer/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 17:46:20 +0000http://danablog.org/?p=2649Continue reading →]]>For more than fifty years, DABI member Michael Gazzaniga, Ph.D., has been working towards fostering our understanding of the human brain. During the summer of 1964, he worked under neurobiologist Roger Sperry at the California Institute of Technology and contributed to a discovery that is now considered “legendary” in the field of brain science.

The discovery of the “split brain” occurred while Sperry and Gazzaniga were studying patients that had undergone split-brain surgery, or corpus calloscotomy, as a way to lessen their epileptic seizures. When questioning both the right and left hemispheres of one patient’s brain afterwards, they found that both sides acted independently from each other. When asking the right side what he wanted to be when he grew up, he answered, “an automobile racer.” When they directed the same question at the left side, he answered, “a draftsman.” In a recent interview with National Geographic, Gazzaniga explains:

[W]e were able to discover that the right hemisphere didn’t know about the functions of the left hemisphere and the left hemisphere didn’t have access to the information in the right hemisphere. Out of that came the left brain-right brain metaphor. It’s been with our culture a long time and, of course, it got picked up and over-extended. I was skiing once in Colorado, struggling a bit, and some guy came zipping down the hill by me and he yelled: ‘Use your right brain!’ [Laughs] Of course, it’s a little more complex than that.

In the article, he recounts his experiences as a graduate student eager to join Sperry’s team at Caltech and insight he has gained over decades of strenuous—but rewarding—work. Now, at age 75, Gazzaniga is the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind and a professor of psychology at University of California Santa Barbara. Less than three weeks after his interview with National Geographic, Gazzaniga was also featured on The Brian Lehrer Show at one of New York’s flagship public radio stations, WNYC 93.9 FM.

Much has changed since Gazzaniga first began his career as a neurobiologist in the 1960s. In his latest book, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life inNeuroscience, Gazzaniga looks back on the challenges he faced, as well as the elations he shared with his team of pioneering neuroscientists.His collaboration with Sperry happened by chance, only because of a letter the young graduate wrote asking if he could use a summer intern. That letter was the spark for a career that has spanned more than five decades and led to publications and lab studies that have since contributed toward our understanding of how the brain enables mind and behavior.

-Seimi Rurup

]]>http://danablog.org/2015/02/18/national-geographic-features-split-brain-pioneer/feed/0danablog505michaelgazzanigaThe Biology of Love: Who We Choose and Whyhttp://danablog.org/2015/02/13/the-biology-of-love-who-we-choose-and-why/
http://danablog.org/2015/02/13/the-biology-of-love-who-we-choose-and-why/#commentsFri, 13 Feb 2015 15:22:10 +0000http://danablog.org/?p=2640Continue reading →]]>Valentine’s Day inspires a post about someone who has dedicated her career to studying the science behind attraction and desire. For more than thirty years, Helen Fisher, Ph.D., has studied the link between brain chemistry and romantic love, in hopes of better understanding the patterns that occur when human beings choose their mates.

Fisher—biological anthropologist, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, and author of Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love—recently gave a talk as part of PopTech 2014’s “Rebellion” series, which featured a diverse range of specialists who examined the “rebellious possibilities that drive us ever forward.” Fisher’s talk, entitled “What We Want”, included asking the audience to consider why we choose one person over another and what makes a happy partnership. “[Romantic love] is a powerful brain system…It comes from primordial parts of the brain way below the cortex. It gives you the energy, the focus, the ecstasy, the despair, and the motivation…It’s a drive to win life’s greatest prize.

Fisher, who is chief scientific advisor to match.com, attracted media attention in 2005 when she collaborated with the creators of the popular website to craft a new platform for online dating: chemistry.com. Through this site, she posted an anonymous questionnaire and then studied the answers of 100,000 people who participated. To her surprise, Fisher found that no two results were identical.

In a similar study, Fisher worked with colleagues to scan the brains of people who recently fell in love, were rejected by love, and those who have been happily married for more than twenty-one years. By studying human mating habits, it was determined that there are four chemical triggers in the brain—dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen/oxytocin—that link to brain systems and common personality traits.

People listed under the dopamine system (also categorized as explorers) are sensation seekers, risk takers, curious, and restless. Serotonin people (builders) are more structured, calm, respectful, and cautious. Those in the testosterone category (directors) are bold, analytical, emotionally-contained, and straightforward. Finally, the estrogen/oxytocin system belongs to the negotiators (long-term thinkers who are very personable, imaginative, and introspective). Fisher concluded that depending on his or her category, people are likely to choose a partner that complements their particular brain system.

When asked for her thoughts on whether or not technology negatively affects human relationships, she said that although “courtship is changing,” technology is expanding the dating pool, and “we may be on the verge of seeing more happy marriages in the world today.” She noted that romance, attachment, and sex systems in the brain evolved millions of years ago and will continue to evolve for as long as mankind inhabits the planet.

As human beings, we are drawn to others—whether it’s a friend or romantic interest—that balance well with our personalities. As Fisher found through her studies, only a small percentage of people still choose their partners on a basis of “clanism”. As we move forward with human evolution, the tendency to stay within a tightknit circle of people who share the same ethnicity or religion is also changing. She found three common traits among those who are in long-term, happy relationships: empathy, the ability to control stress and emotions, and “positive illusions”—the ability to overlook flaws and focus on the positive aspects of their mate’s personality.

Says Fisher, “Any prediction of the future needs to take into account the most important determinant of the future—our unquenchable, adaptable, and primordial human drive to love.”